1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for cooking laundry starch. More particularly, the invention relates to an apparatus and method for the cooking and dispensing of single batches of laundry starch which are cooked and discharged in consecutive single batches as needed to one or more commercial laundry machines.
2. Description of Related Art
In most modern commercial laundries, starch is added to the commercial laundry machines either by adding a precooked dry starch or a liquid synthetic starch directly to the machines as needed. Both precooked and synthetic starch are significantly more expensive than uncooked starch, which is sometimes referred to as "pearl starch." Additionally, precooked starch frequently does not dissolve completely leaving starch specks on the garments as well as causing starch build-up on the press heads when the garments are pressed. To avoid the expense of precooked starch some commercial laundries add uncooked starch directly to the laundry machines. The uncooked starch is later cooked when the garment is pressed. Although this method reduces starch costs, it causes starch buildup on the press heads and results in uneven starching of the garments.
To reduce the costs of using precooked dry starch or synthetic starch and to avoid the problems with using uncooked starch, some commercial laundries use existing starch cookers in which a large vat of starch solution is cooked and then drawn from the vat manually. Some examples of existing starch cookers can be seen in U.S. Pat. No. 2,253,262 to Bierly, U.S. Pat. No. 1,418,320 to Miller, or U.S. Pat. No. 1,190,690 to Tyler.
The problems of existing starch cookers include insufficient agitation resulting in lumpy starch, inferior starching and starch build-up on press heads; overcooking the starch resulting in inferior starching of the garments; fouling of unused starch and employee dangers from the manual transfer of hot starch solution from the starch cooker to the laundry machine. These problems were first addressed by the single-batch starch cooking and dispensing apparatus described in application Ser. No. 08/192,559, now U.S. Reg. No. U.S. Pat. No. 5,437,169, and in the improvements and method described in the application to which this application relates, namely, application Ser. No. 08/496,369. Additional refinements and improvements on both the method and apparatus are disclosed herein.